Free At Last
by Phoenix To Flame
Summary: To learn how to let go of your dreams, of your goals in life, is a hard and painful process. But one that is necessary to grow to be the people who we wish to be. To grieve, and to change, is something that even Silver must learn.


I have now just realized that getting struck with plot bunnies repeatedly and viciously about the head actually works sometimes. Combine a brand-new Soul Silver game with an obsession with Repo! The Genetic Opera, and I actually managed to write something.

Set roughly after Giovanni (apparently) commits suicide by jumping down from a waterfall. I wouldn't know, I haven't reached that part yet. Still have Clair and the Elite Four to kill. All of what I know about the end of the game I found on TV Tropes, so if I'm inaccurate about something, please let me know!

And about Silver's actions in this, remember. He just lost his father, which (from my impression) he's been trying to find since he could legally search. So losing his father, and his goal in life is likely to shake him up pretty strongly until he learns how to pull himself back to his feet again.

Song used in this is Genetic Emancipation, from Repo! The Genetic Opera. Watch the video, join the cult.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Pokemon or Repo! The Genetic Opera, and neither do I wish to.

On to the story!

* * *

The water tumbled down serenely, ignoring all pasts of passion, hatred, love and sorrow that took place on its shores. Gray clouds lit the afternoon sky, somewhere between promising rain, and promising the return of the sun.

On the edge of the water was a long black coat, swaying peacefully in the chaos of the bottom of the falls. Caught on a branch, it simply stayed in one place, like the boy on the bank right by it.

Red hair, soaked by the spray of the waterfall, hung over his face as a curtain to shield what remained of his heart was left from the truth of that black coat. The truth of the owner of that black coat.

He wouldn't blame the girl who was the last one to see him alive. It wouldn't be her fault that a family line of insanity took him over after losing a simple pokemon battle. Maybe he would have blamed her if it wasn't so painful, maybe.

_Years, it's been so many years._

_Resenting the years_

_and my heredity_

Silver barely remembered seeing him at all when he was young. Just a few flashes of his face, the shape of his back every time he walked out the door. Gray memories, worn away by the passage of time. Memories filled with hatred at the man who was never there, and the undercurrent of love for a father, the kind that you always grew even if you only saw him a fragment of times, a fragment of days in years that seemed to stretch on endlessly, even if he was only thirteen.

Shoulders shook with concealed tears, that he wouldn't let fall from silver eyes. Crying wouldn't solve anything, couldn't solve anything. His own pokemon all sat around him, offering loyalty to him- somehow, even after all he did to hurt them, build himself up on a pedestal of pain and cruelty to ease the loneliness and bitterness that he clung to with a child's trembling hands.

Sneasel, Crobat, Feraligatr, Magneton, Alakazam, Gengar. How funny it was that they found it to forgive him after everything. He imagined that Lyra, and maybe Ethan probably would too.

_ 'Stupid people.' _He thought as he hiccuped, swallowing misery and mucus down his throat from refusing to cry. '_Stupid people that are so...so __**content **__with what you have that you can keep picking up the broken doll every time he falls down.' _The water continued to fall, yanking on the black coat with a stronger intensity as the rain started.

_Ohh, I have hated and loved you_

_I have hidden behind you, _

_but I finally see._

"What am I supposed to do now?" He asked the water, not expecting an answer. "What am I supposed to do now that my father is dead and I have nothing else to reach for?" Red hair clung to his face and ran rivulets of water down his cheeks, rather like tears that should have been shed, and he laughed bitterly. "What _can _I do? What else is there left to do?"

Claws touched his face, and his sneasel climbed onto his knees, pushing his hair out of his eyes to look at him. Around him, his pokemon sat, offering the only comfort that they could.

Magneton, hovering above and shielding him from the rain, the pokemon who had once faced down a swarm of rampaging crobat for a trainer that didn't care about it.

Feraligatr, a strong presence at his back, the first pokemon he ever stole, and treated badly when it didn't live up to his unreachable expectations, and still strived to reach them.

Alakazam, he had slapped it around whenever it only teleported instead of attacking, but never away from angry fists. Crobat, somehow evolving out of friendship towards him, even though it took him a year to see how much he had hurt it. Gengar, though he was unable to hurt it with fists, he never failed to bring down its fragile courage with words that cut at every open wound.

Sneasel, also stolen, but from a trainer who somehow treated their pokemon even worse, Silver had spirited the bleeding pokemon away from the attacks of the trainer, ignoring their demand for the charizard to take him out. Sneasel, the first pokemon that had been unbroken by him, and held the fragile trust of a child towards a parent that he had been unable to bring himself to break, recognizing the sad look in its eyes. What did it take to change? What did it take to move on from the anguish of the past and walk on towards a new destiny?

Maybe he didn't have to constantly walk towards the silhouette of his father, always out of reach of his child's hands, his desperately running feet after the man who always was a step out of reach, always too distant for any child to find.

Maybe, just because he had always wanted to find his father, searching for some level of love that only a parent could give him, didn't mean that he would have to want only that for all of his life, and nothing else.

Maybe, just maybe, he could find another path to walk. One that his father hadn't taken, one that Silver himself could be proud of.

Because that's what truly mattered, right?

_You, I've mistaken for destiny_

_but the truth is my legacy_

_is not up to my genes._

The rain slowed its steady imprint upon the earth, the black coat washing away with the river, away, away to some other part of the world. And the boy, lost, but no longer alone was able to stand up again.

Silver watched the water moving on in patterns that had never been before and never would be again. Even though it had know blood, and despair, and sorrow, it had also know joy, and hope, and love. It wasn't too late to try again.

His pokemon stood all around him, living proof that in the end, the past didn't matter. Even though they all knew that he was cruel, and bitter, and unforgiving before, didn't mean that he had to stay that way for the rest of his life.

And who knew how the rest of his life would turn out? Certainly not him, but he was willing to embrace that uncertainty for the first time in his life. And the sun broke away from the clouds, covering his wet face in a halo of light.

_True, though the imprint is deep in me_

_it will always be up to me_

_Up to me._

Silver pushed his red hair out of his eyes again, ignoring the water that covered him now. He looked at the six pokemon watching him, with some sort of expression mirrored in the eyes that saw all that he was. He didn't know entirely what it was though, whether it was anger, fear, regret or none of those. "I'm sorry." he said, to all of them. "I'm sorry, and I know that I can't change the past with any apologies. But...do you want to come with me still? To help me find something new in my life?"

They didn't leap into cheers, something that none of them had ever done, but they nodded, they smiled, they forgave him again.

And what ever composure he had found fled, as tears suddenly ran down his cheeks and he buried his face in his hands. And they didn't let him cry alone, like he had made them do before. Instead, they all crowded around him again, letting him know that they were there for as long as they could be.

"I'm free." he choked out at last, looking at his companions. Lifting tear-reddened eyes to the bluing sky, he vowed to let go of who he had been before, and to become someone that he wanted to be. "I'm free at last.

_Free at last._

* * *

_End_


End file.
